College Football 25

first off, ignore the 1 star reviews on Amazon. From what I have read, they aren’t reviews of the game itself, they are 1 star because the person purchasing the product bought it without knowing what system they actually have. It’s an error on the buyer’s part, nothing more!

Second, this game was worth the wait! does it have some bugs, yes, but all games do, especially when they are just released. Below I will break down the game into different categories and give my take on each.

Graphics: 9/10
Graphically this is a truly BEAUTIFUL game! EA did an amazon job on creating the stadiums, fields, mascots, etc! My only reason for not giving 10/10 is that in some shots of the team entrances or player models, it does looks very, generic. That’s to be expected though when you have 11,000 athletes to load into a game.

Stadium environments: 10/10
EA put alot of time into trying to capture the feel of what it’s like to be in the best stadiums in the country and what it is like to come in as the visiting team. I feel they have done a great job of that! when you are playing at LSU or Penn State, the screen will shake, receiver routes will distourt and even show incorrect plays, you may not be able to call an audible and your players can get rattled affecting their performance!
They have also done alot of work to try and capture different team’s traditions like the Iowa wave, the white out at Happy Valley, etc. They do a good job with these as well, but after playing a few games i find myself skipping them (it doesnt show, but hold A/X to skip them)

Presentation: 9/10
The team entrances were briefly discussed above, but along with the presentation comes the commentary teams. This year you get 2 different ones. For most games you will get Rece Davis and crew, but or the big games where you are prime time game of the week you get Chris Fowler and Herbstreit. Overall, the commentary is relevant and solid. My complaint is that Chris Fowler, who normally is my favorite and is electric, is flat alot of the time and just not exciting. It is a nice change though

Gameplay: 9/10
At this point, you may be thinking “ok, it looks great and the presentation is solid, but how does it play?!”. I will be honest, the game has it’s WTF moments ranging from a receiver running in the wrong direction, linemen missing obvious blocks, defenders making superman catches (if you play madden on All Madden you know what I mean), etc. And they do get frustrating, especially when it affect the outcome of a game. But keep in mind, it IS just a game. It’s not real people thinking for themselves in there. 95% of the time the game plays very well and it fun! I do recommend playing a bit to find what difficulty level you should play on, then tweak the sliders to your liking. I personally turned down the CPU interceptions to help with that issue. Out of the box though, this game is pretty balanced though!

Overall: 9/10
When it is all said and done i give this game a 9/10. As mentioned in my review, the game definitely has it’s bugs, but there hasn’t been a patch released since launch (its 7/24 at the time of writing this), so i expect that in the near future there will be an update that fixes some of these. If you are on the fence about whether or not to buy this game I absolutely recommend it! Just make sure you have an Xbox SERIES X/S and not the Xbox ONE X/S…

I’m one of the few people who actually likes Madden. At least enough to not constantly complain about it. This is way better. It looks amazing, plays amazing, and has so much depth. Not even a day in and I’m nearly done with my first season in Dynasty mode.

Overall, feels a lot like college football! Some repetition in cutscenes and intros, but the game play is great.

For anyone that didn’t read the announcements months ago: The game is for new-gen gaming consoles only (Xbox Series X and PS5)

The game has a lot of depth. There is much flexibility with your dynasty (create your team, change teams to different conferences, etc.) Intros and presentation are a nice touch. The atmosphere in the stadiums feels like a real college football game too.

As for the gameplay, it does feel clunky in spots. It doesn’t feel as fluid as I hoped for. Some weird glitches do occur in general. Maybe it’s the animation, the ball bouncing off so many players like ping pong, or navigating of the menus. But it’s EA, and EA is known for its poorly designed games when they release.

Kicking in the game is hilarious. I understand why they made it difficult because you can’t just click a couple of buttons and it’s perfect. You need to be patient and practice to get good at it. It’s a challenge I enjoy but others may not.

Overall, it’s a decent game and I enjoy it more than what EA has produced with Madden over the years but the game needs more fine tuning and some major updates or they are going to ruin a game people have waited 10 years for.